Recently we had a very special guest in our Lightweight Java User Group. Talip Ozturk is the founder & CTO of Hazelcast. He is a pioneering startup founder having created the first Silicon Valley startup from Turkey. He has been working with enterprise Java since 1999. Talip gave a nice talk on Distributed Caching with JCache and beyond. After his talk we took the opportunity to ask a couple questions about him and his work.

Check out the interview with Talip Ozturk below:

You gave the talk “Distributed Caching with JCache and Beyond” on Tuesday, October 3rd in our Lightweight Java User Group.

What’s your impression of the Lightweight Java User Group & comSysto?

Talip Ozturk: Very smart and interactive group of developers. I love it.

What is so special about JCache?

Talip Ozturk: It standardizes the caching in Java. No need to learn a new caching API. We are now free to switch to any caching provider. Life is much easier this way.

How did you come up with the idea to establish Hazelcast?

Talip Ozturk: I thought it would be really cool if we had distributed implementations of all data structures and services available in java concurrency package. This way we can build distributed applications easily.

Did you always dream of creating your own company?

Talip Ozturk: Yes, since I was in college. I was curious to see how far the rabbit hole goes.

What makes Hazelcast different from its competitors?

Talip Ozturk: Its elegant design from its API to implementation to packaging and also the fact that there is great community around the product. It is built to give “feels right” feeling.

In which direction is your company headed for 2016?

Talip Ozturk: Out new hot-restart persistence is a big deal for us. Also we are working on to make Hazelcast more cloud friendly through better integration with Openshift, Docker, Cloud Foundry etc.

If you could describe yourself in only 5 words, what would they be?

Talip Ozturk: passionate puzzled curious mind

Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

Talip Ozturk: building new technology products

What would you say is so special about your job?

Talip Ozturk: understanding customer/user experience.

What event did you most recently visit and why did you visit this event?

Talip Ozturk: JavaOne, it is great place to demo Hazelcast and meet developers.